Also, there should be a branch leading off to my alma mater, where if you weren't a D&D/SF/Fantasy/Adult-Baby-Fetishist/Cosplay nerd, you had to sit sexlessly in your dorm room while the orgy of pent-up nerdlust next door bounced all the books off your shelves onto your bed and you cried for your sunlight-bestrewn path of choices.

Yeah, I've been playing with it to see if I can make it both legible and not run off the edge of the column. Survey says, no.

But honestly -- a giant chart purporting to be everything nerdy, including the entire fucking internet, and girls are present only as a theoretical award for eschewing nerdiness and getting out in the sunshine? (or in costume at conventions.) Every so often I forget, and think I'm people.

8: Thinking about it a bit (a really little bit), one of the defining characteristics of male nerds is the absence of women. Maybe there need to be two charts. I'm not sure a gender neutral one wouldn't be neutered in an important way.

3 is so well written, so full of perfect images, that I've read it four times. And now I'll read it again. Yep, still really good. Not to break character or anything, but there are times that I really like this blog.

27: Yeah, any such chart as created by actual internet nerds for an internet audience would be a lot funnier and make tons more sense. This one neither flows nor matches much of my sense of the Nerd's Progress.

I'm gently telling you that this is a problematic statement, and gently easing into the fact that LB was using the phrase "this annoys me" to point out deep misogyny, and hence trivializing her complaint is in itself, gently, misogynistic.

I'm thinking that the female nerd chart would be at least a little different--a box for Yaoi, maybe, or ... I'm sure any of my guesses will be wildly off. But I can't help thinking that the path of the female nerdling is different than the male's.

42: Bogging gets you laid? What makes you say that? Blogging has made me hunched (more than I used to be), myopic (more than I used to be), and disengaged (more than I used to be). Where, pray tell, does hunched, myopic, and disengaged = hott! Only in the Times Style section.

Though bogging used to be something the really preppy kids did in high school. They had jeeps before jeeps were cool. And knew that environmental degradation was cool before the rest of us. This flow chart did not apply to them.

37: Huh? I just meant that it's stupid and not worth getting annoyed over. I didn't realize there's an actual article that goes along with it. In any event, of course I recognize the misogyny, and I am not willing to be annoyed over every instance of such that I witness, else I shall be annoyed all the time.

Huis Clos . . .
"There is a well-known television interview of a medical examiner in Los Angeles who had the horrendous job of autopsying gang members. He bemoaned the necessity of the work, said it didn't really make much difference what he found, a "dead amigo was a dead amigo." When he was berated for his callousness he replied: "Look, I'm just trying to be a little more respectful of these people's families. They come to my table so damned full of holes I sometimes have six, seven bullets from six, seven different guns. I got to cut them up into little biddy pieces to get the bullets out. The city doesn't have enough resources to work on real mysterious killings, much less try to trace all them bullets from stolen guns. We know they just killed each other. It's all just a sad exercise in futility." He exited the cameras but someone forgot to take the microphone off of his lapel and the whole world heard him say: "What to do? Ship the mother fuckers back to Mikeeko."

No, I think nerd != sexless boy. There is a vast subculture in which nerdy people are getting it on, for serious, all the time. But! This only happens for nerdy boys who give up using their female friends as pillows to cry on because Gorgeous McBooberstein doesn't seem to know they exist. That phase seems to end in high school or college, though.

Ok. Now I've found the editorial attached to this picture and it's a lot more annoying than the chart. Rogers' embarrassment at having played a game he now needs to describe as "demented and sad" is itself a little sad and his need to declare in The New York Times that he is now "on top of the world" sounds just like the sort of thing a really annoying nerd would fantasize over.

Nerds have evolved, and the stereotype hasn't. It may be hard to believe, but there are people who use the Internet who aren't nerds! There are nerds who get laid! There are nerds who still roleplay and go to cons and are happily married! There are people who use the Internet or play console games that have absolutely none of the classic nerd markers.

Honestly, was it like this when they invented the printing press? Did the generations after Gutenberg marvel at all the 'reading' and wonder why so many young people were getting interested in illuminating manuscripts (obviously, the only people that read.)

I am annoyed because I am grading at the Times marking the death of a major shaper of our culture with such weak, derivative work. This is how you make a flow-chart illustrating geekdom. Also, if you are recycling Charlie Stross's conceit, you might at least give him credit, without at the same time going to such lengths to say how you're a normal non-nerd these days, really.

67: There is a vast subculture in which nerdy people are getting it on, for serious, all the time. If true, the world has moved on since I was young — and for the better for once.

Cala is absolutely right, of course. The problem is that it often doesn't make sense to call adults "nerds," most of the time. What "nerd" is, really, tended to be a social status of being unpopular in junior high and high school, and also engaging in nerd-culture activities like D&D or playing magic or whatever. But you have to actually have both in order to satisfy the requirements of the nerd archetype. Once you grow up, of course, you get to choose your social environments and so it becomes a lot harder to meet the requirement of being socially unpopular (i.e. not getting laid) if you are engaging in nerd-type activities. Assuming, of course, that you actually want to get laid.

There are nerds who still roleplay and go to cons and are happily married!

It's still hard letting go of the stereotype, though. One of the guys my boyfriend games with is crazy into gaming, and is also pretty hot. Then I met his wife, who is also really hot. The two of them do boggle the mind.

82: Ohh, one of my bfs was really into gaming, and he kept taking me over to this apartment in a tony part of town where the two most gorgeous people evar would play nerdy games with us. They were seriously intensely gorgeous and flirty and really into gaming and stuff, so I figured my bf (or the couple themselves, or both) was trying to arrange some kind of group-sex thing. I should have pressed the couple on this issue instead of my bf, who stopped wanting to go play with them.

What's the point of getting all nerdy about games with super-hot people if there's no potential sexiness going on? Deep disappointment. I should have gotten their number before breaking up with the bf.

That said, I did once go out on a date with someone from Craigslist who, like, went to Magic: The Gathering tournaments and stuff. He made money doing it. I think he was an economics grad student. Nice guy, and reasonably decent-looking, but it was immediately apparent to the both of us that it Wasn't Happening. It was like, he was a Nerd, and I was Nerd-Cool.

87: Word. Unforunately for me, I find gaming (as in, role-playing games) to be earth-shatteringly dull, as well as those games they play with miniatures or whatever the fuck. I prefer to sit at home at read the internet all day long.

So the article is here. And Populuxe is wrong about the "demented and sad" comment, which is clearly tongue-in-cheek and affectionate. The actual point of the article ("We're all living in Gary's world now") is a bit of a stretch, and the ripoff of the Geek Flowchart really is lame.

Another important part about being an actual "nerd" according to the archetype that we try to translate from high school is that you have to be not only socially unpopular, but also socially awkward and inept. As people age, go to college, and move into the working world, they tend to figure out how to make conversation, and be polite. And once they start getting laid and making friends, they become more confident. And thus less nerdy. It's not really nerd-dom if you don't give a shit what other people think of you for playing the Firefly role-playing game of whatever.

Maybe there's been a precession of terminology. Nerds are cool now, and the uncool are called geeks.

Evidence: about 8 years ago I had a lovely 24-year-old co-worker who was happy to be called a nerd, but drew the line at being called a geek. She went into oceanography, which is nerdy enough for anyone. She was attractive enough that she was always being hit on, and had developed a system for weeding out the "players" and other inappropriate guys.

In actuality, the ratio of idiosyncratic, non-mainstream "nerdish" pursuits to stereotypes is too big. I give you Avalon-Hill wargamers, shortwave radio fans, builders of ships in a bottle, model railroaders (not all of them escaped like their MIT brethren), collectors of every fucking thing you could possibly ever even dream of etc.

I am going to disagree with the rapidly-developing new consensus that "nerds" are just as likely to get laid in high school as "non-nerds". And this has nothing to do with this issue:

No, I think nerd != sexless boy. There is a vast subculture in which nerdy people are getting it on, for serious, all the time. But! This only happens for nerdy boys who give up using their female friends as pillows to cry on because Gorgeous McBooberstein doesn't seem to know they exist. That phase seems to end in high school or college, though.

Nerdy boys are not just boys who share a certain subculture. They tend to be in that subculture because of being uncomfortable with spontaneity, uncomfortable with unpredictable and illogical situations, and prone to overanalyzing things. This is less true now than in the pre-Internet era, but still correlates. It describes the group of high school friends that I stayed in touch with after high school - which ended a mere 8 years ago!

Then in college all of us got a chance to start anew and stopped being sexless, mostly.

Ineptness and unattractiveness aside, the misogyny in male nerd and tech communities is pretty intense. And the anti-physicalism. And the competitiveness -- guys don't respect anyone who can be beaten, but are humiliated if being beaten by a girl.

92: In high school, on the way to the mountains for my troop's boy scout camp, we stopped for lunch at a place that was a combination restaurant and arcade. The arcade had some of those video games with guns on a cord so you could shoot at the screen. No one wanted to play the games and the cords happened to be pretty long, so we grabbed the guns and began pretending to shoot at each other, hiding behind various objects or rolling on the floor to avoid being shot.

I think the consensus was that plenty of "nerds" get laid after high school. Obviously, in high school, which social group you identify as a part of has a huge impact or how you're perceived and whether you get laid or not.

The type of high school you go to is important, too. At my school, which was smaller than the American mega-school (120 students in my graduating class), social groups weren't as rigid and being academically successful or into things like Theatre were no barrier to you being "cool", well-liked, or being sexually active. There was a guy at my HS who's slightly famous now, who was attractive, extremely smart and outspoken, and also did all kinds of nerd-culture activities (D&D, Magic, etc), and he had multiple girlfriends (including me). LeBear is very similar to this guy in having the aforementioned traits (except for the famous part), but went to a huge American high school and had much less success with girls.

96: The correct term for the people on the bottom of the social ladder is "loser," I think. Having nerdy preoccupations wouldn't necessarily land you at the bottom, but in most cases prohibited rising to the top. I'd be surprised if it works much differently today.

99: I am going to disagree with the rapidly-developing new consensus that "nerds" are just as likely to get laid in high school as "non-nerds".

What new consensus? But you're right -- chances of getting laid in high school do dramatically increase when you have fewer openly nerdy habits and inclinations.

As people age, go to college, and move into the working world, they tend to figure out how to make conversation, and be polite. And once they start getting laid and making friends, they become more confident. And thus less nerdy.

Honestly, I'm not sure there are many communities that are less misogynistic. Jocks? Theater kids? Band-geeks? Snooty intellectuals? Car-maintenance dudes? Druggies? At least, at my high school, there simply wasn't a community one could join to find boys who weren't deathly afraid of and hypercompetitive with girls. D&D nerds are just one kind of misogynist in-group, and not, AFAICT, worse than any other.

110: What "misogyny" means is "hates women." I think if we're looking at nerd communities honestly, the amount of passive-aggressive resentment and outright fear of girls that tends to be native to them generates a fair amount of actual misogyny.

107: Yeah, of course my sample is skewed. Most of the nerds I currently know are people who ended up going to law school. Actually I was surprised to find that a lot of the "popular" and hot law school guys would spend a lot of time playing World of Warcraft and Axis & Allies. It was weird, 'cause they were sleeping with chicks who were hot, rich, and super-high-status. I never could figure those guys out.

Populuxe is wrong about the "demented and sad" comment, which is clearly tongue-in-cheek and affectionate

It isn't "clearly" tongue-in-cheek and affectionate to me. To me he sounds like a nerd, a nerd trying to semi-humorously disavow his youthful nerdiness before a crowd of people he thinks are cool, unaware that this very desire to disavow his nerdiness is exactly what always already makes him so uncool. But I concede that reasonable people can disagree on that point.

Eh, misogyny as such rarely stops men from getting laid. Inability to socialize effectively or inability to judge who might want to sex you and who will be completely uninterested are much bigger obstacles.

I tried to get the D&D nerds in High School to teach me how to play. They were stand-offish about it.

I was actually talking about this a few days ago. I had a number of friends in middle school who were into D&D and I tried to join them in their enthusiasm, but games would break down in arguments - which I stayed out of, due to excessive not caring - over hit points, the correct dice to use, the order of attack in battles, etc. We gradually drifted apart during high school, although that had a lot to do with being in different districts at that point.

94: And once they start getting laid and making friends, they become more confident. And thus less nerdy.

Some do , some do not. Your life trajectory may vary. Most of the existing tropes around nerdom as expressed in the article and in this thread are the results of the standard pop-culture process of usurping and stereotyping actual life narratives by relatively successful escapees from those particular swamps of insecurity. The drift of the connotations of the word "nerd" reflects this.

120: They repeat that motif on Numb3rs, which my mother watches. Irritates the crap out of me. All the mathy people I know use whiteboards. I'm sure it's some kind of cinematographic trope meant to keep us from actually caring about what equations are being written.

120, 126: Yeah, that's stupid. I've never seen anyone do this. I always used whiteboards or chalkboards, whichever was available. Or just, you know, some fucking paper. Which was dispreferred if there was a chalkboard available, but still fine.

I think the consensus was that plenty of "nerds" get laid after high school. Obviously, in high school, which social group you identify as a part of has a huge impact or how you're perceived and whether you get laid or not.

My point was that even though girls exist who share the interests of these nerds and are friendly with them, they are still likely to not be romantically successful until three or four years later than their peers, because of their own insecurities that lead them into being comfortable with the historically male-associated (and yet not dominant but subjugated) subcultures.

God, I love Sundays. Speaking of nerdiness, I got up at 11, went to the bodega to get breakfast-taco supplies, made and ate the tacos with my boy, and have spent the rest of the entire day in bed napping and reading the internet. I think now I will finally get out of bed and take a shower and do the dishes.

97: Also: the idea that everyone is role-playing in life originates with Shakespeare, playwright of the now. Duh.

Yeah. This would be the relevant portion of the article:

This diverse evolution from Mr. Gygax's 1970s dungeon goes much further. Every Gmail login, every instant-messaging screen name, every public photo collection on Flickr, every blog-commenting alias is a newly manifested identity, a character playing the real world.

I want to say this is a difference in degree, but not in kind, from the sort of role-playing we always already (ha!) engage in. But I could argue against myself there.

I think there's a level of misogyny that makes guys not want to get laid if it can't be done in some sort of slave girl context.

Maybe. I haven't run into that, but I have frequently run into the "The hot girl should see past the unattractive and awkward outside and recognize me for how awesome I truly am, even while I ignore this girl who is trying to talk to me because I find her unattractive and awkward."

The discussion on Risk serves to illustrate my point. D&D nerds looking down on nerds from a simpler time. You want irretrievable nerd? Is it possible to recover from sitting around with your friends playing Risk singing "Hold, Kamchatka!" to the tune of "On, Wisconsin!"? Huh? HUH? Or the time you "bombed yourself in" in Stratego by putting all the bombs in the front row?

I agree with 148 insofar as the biggest problem with nerdsex is that the nerd isn't thinking about the girl enough to even care whether she's a slave type or not. He's just thinking about himself, and wondering what she thinks about him, etc.

The jock mentality might be more like, "That girl is not perfect enough for me! She should have a flatter stomach and better clothes and be properly submissive!" The nerd is thinking, "That girl looked at me! What is she thinking about me? Does she like me? I wonder what I look like to her?" Neither of them knows how to invest himself in the possibility that she has a consciousness independent of his existence. Sometimes, this comes with maturity.

I'm pleased to say, then, that I was never a proper nerd, never played Risk (or Stratego), though I did play that 3-dimensional checkers game, worked in a library, and, uh, I did paint my D&D dice, with red fingernail polish (pretty, shiny); BUT! I also wore cowboy boots and hung with the theater crowd, YET did not get laid until just after high school.

152 is right in what's going on - jocks judging women, nerds worrying about how women are judging them - but I'm not sure how worrying excessively about what other people think counts as misogyny. Although maybe 152 wasn't even calling it misogyny.

My friends and I stopped playing Stratego when we realized that perfect play leads to a draw. The person who goes on the attack has a pretty big disadvantage, due to not knowing where the defender's bombs are and the fact that if their troops are on your side, you can choose who to attack their troops with.

164: It is misogyny to the extent it disregards the agency/consciousness/humanity of the woman entirely subordinating the totality of her being to the basic function of "how she responds to me." I.e., to the extent that the whole of a woman is defined by her relationship to a man.

My friends and I stopped playing Stratego when we realized that perfect play leads to a draw. The person who goes on the attack has a pretty big disadvantage, due to not knowing where the defender's bombs are and the fact that if their troops are on your side, you can choose who to attack their troops with.

An oldie for the computer branch of this conversation. (Easily updated to replace DOS with Windows and Linux as the "one".)

Two versions of OS/2
so the small machines can fly.
Three versions of DOS
for the clueless in their homes.
Nine versions of UNIX
for the hackers late at night.
One version of Windows
for the Dark Lord on his throne.

In the land of Redmond, where the shadows lie.
One OS to rule them all, one OS to find them.
One OS to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Redmond, where the shadows lie.

165: I thought God was a first-class aid to guilty, self-recriminating sex.

Oddly enough, I was at a hip-hop show last night and saw a woman there who I'm pretty sure came as close as anyone ever did to converting me in high school, on the strength of her amazing gorgeousness. (I think it was the same woman.) Part of her charm was the prospect not just of having sex with her, but the sheer amount of guilt and cognitive dissonance that would go with it. Which in retrospect is a little weird, I guess, but I am culturally Catholic.

166: No, 'twas I who was attempting to cast Risk out of the dominions of Nerddonia, not your issue at all.

Semi-related: does anyone know why all the public-radio-type/college/independent-ish stations tend to be in the lower frequency bands? I like that I can roll into any town and just start tuning up from 88.7 till I hear the sweet, sweet tones of Carl Kasell's baritone. But why is that?

164: I'm not sure how worrying excessively about what other people think counts as misogyny.

I think it's wrong that worrying excessively about what other people think is usually the problem, when there's a nerd-misogyny problem. What's more often at issue is simply a sense of entitlement; if I listen to you, treat you in reasonably friendly fashion and refrain from physically attacking you, you should obviously be fucking me regardless of my lack of social skills or physical attractiveness. It's basically just the "nice guy" phenomenon.

170: I know that 88.1-91.9 is reserved for non-commercial. A bit of googling turns up that this was set up in 1938 per legislation from 1934. So one of those holdover productivity-chilling restraints on freedom from hte New Deal.

I never did act on the impulse, which I sort of regret a little even though I know I shouldn't. It would make more sense if I hadn't chosen the even more masochistic path, in early college, of nursing fruitless crushes on lesbians.

185: I'd like to fuck a good Nazarene girl once, just to say I did. But I think the ship has kind of sailed on that -- the only way to bring it about would be to start moving in Nazarene social circles again, which I could not bear to do.

Actually, I think that was half of the thrill of dating a recently-divorced guy. I was the first since, which resulted in delicious "OMG I can't believe I'm doing this"/"OMG this is so incredibly awesome" tensions for him. The more this could be simulated in other relationships, the more badass the concept of sex would be.

I was the first since, which resulted in delicious "OMG I can't believe I'm doing this"/"OMG this is so incredibly awesome" tensions for him.

That was indeed the way the first post-divorce (or technically, post-separation) sex was for me. And, actually, the first crazy-guilt-issue-free sex ever. Which itself was probably a little bizarre. "Wow, you know, that was really great and I feel like I really should be totally ashamed of my slutty self but in fact I just want to jump the shit out of you!" "Um, okay." Not that such a conversation ever took place outside of my head or anything. But, yeah, post-divorce sex, it turns out, is a crazy and delightful thing. Especially for those who are still totally defilable good girls.

Maybe the thing is that when someone you're sleeping with is letting themselves go in a totally new way, they tend to really go all out with it, being suddenly unrepressed about something previously repressed, which is sure to result in fun. However, once the fun itself has come to an end, there are still almost always emotional repercussions I've never known how to handle. Someone should write a guide for uninhibited people about how to deal with partners wrestling with their inhibitions so we can all make more sense to one another. I usually end up feeling guilty for taking away the security provided by those inhibitions.

120: I spent a couple of years working at a place where the windows looking into the central courtyard did, in fact, come equipped with dry-erase markers (and erasers!), which we would use when arguing in the hallways. But everyone knew we were a bunch of big flakes.

I usually end up feeling guilty for taking away the security provided by those inhibitions.

Really? I rather enjoyed my brief dalliance with living uninhibited and didn't miss the security at all. The return to prudent and responsible, though surely the prudent and responsible thing to do, has proven rather anticlimactic.

It is misogyny to the extent it disregards the agency/consciousness/humanity of the woman entirely subordinating the totality of her being to the basic function of "how she responds to me." I.e., to the extent that the whole of a woman is defined by her relationship to a man.

But people are naturally selfish this way. The nerd's problem is that he doesn't have the minimal skills to work with what the other person needs and use it to get her to gratify him. It's not that he's unusually selfish or misogynistic, it's that he's not observant or skilled.

Not that people can't be genuinely other-regarding, but it's difficult and rare and takes years and is a whole spiritual discipline.

Related but I couldn't work it in: sexual desire is not exactly about respecting the autonomy or agency of others, because in sex we set aside our autonomy and transcend our individuality. (Or go beneath it -- animal or divine or both). True, that can be so scary that one wants advance assurance that the other person will respect your humanity again the next morning.

Maybe there's no contradiction though, because mutual manipulation, even for selfish purposes, is a natural school for unselfishness. The way that trading in the market makes us serve each other even if our major aim is getting rich. You have to observe the needs of the other. As the urgency of our selfish needs fades a bit, we discover we've picked up a whole set of skills for unselfishly pleasing each other.

But attractive people are often thought to be unselfish, simply because they please others without even really trying to. Which is one of life's unfairnesses.

Not only is it not a proper flowchart. It's not a proper flowchart, and it's "ironically self-aware" about not being a proper flowchart in a way that accuses you of being a true nerd if you notice its flaws, even though the joke would be about 1000 times funnier if it were a proper fucking flowchart. Morons.

Who in the hell calls someone's cell phone at 130am and hangs up? This number isn't listed. If someone called the wrong number, wouldn't they say something, so as to give the impression that they're not stalking/about-to-murder you? God, I hate people so much sometimes.

You people must not actually know real nerds. I'm probably technically a nerd, but my best friend blows all of you out of the water. I told him the other day, "My dad lost 20 pounds in like a month", to which he replied, "Wow, he must have a really efficient heat sink."

Speaking of nerdishness, I made the mistake of seeing a movie based on the recommendation of one of the LGM posters: There Will Be Blood. It would have been better if they had hired a guy off the street, handed him a pair of scissors and a reel from the middle, and told me where to cut, and declared that the end of the movie.

229: yeah, the real surprise was the opposition from the EPA. Or not, since everyone there except the director apparently supported the stronger CA limits. And I'm sure Johnson's decision had nothing at all to do with last-minute appeals to Dick Cheney from auto manufacturers....

Is anybody else having a really fucking hard time with daylight savings time?

I love daylight savings time. Not having to drive home in the dark again until some time in late October? Sweetness. OK, this morning was a little tough, but mostly because I needed to get to the tire store at 7:30 to get them to replace the tire they sold me Saturday that went flat by Sunday morning (a bar code was left on, evidently, and that messed with it somehow--I didn't really car about the explanation, just that they changed the thing and let me go.) So getting up at 6:30, which my body thought of as 5:30, wasn't great. But that's one day. Sunlight in the evening = good.

Watching her other videos, one of which is a slideshow of some party from like five years ago, reminds me that "orgy of pent-up nerdlust" is exactly right. I went to a party a few months ago full of gamer dudes and the chicks they hung out with, and those people really were having a lot more "party" fun than your average jaded "professional" twenty-somethings I am usually around. They were drinking harder, and flirting more, and generally being crazier.

Of course, I was too inhibited to really participate, which was funny. Grown-up nerds are crazy, man.

247: I don't think she's an outlier at all. Although I agree with the view that I've heard kicking around that nerd culture has allowed more women in during the past decade or two than ever in the past.

Star Trek nerdom, for instance, was almost all male until the arrival of Next Generation.

I take back 247. There are always excruciatingly hot nerds in every group. I keep imagining someone will crown them their kings and queens, but they never do. I actually do buy this woman's complaint that she doesn't get much nerd love.

At Nerd U, one of my best friends was this tall, gorgeous dame with curly brown hair, big eyes, a cupid's-bow smile, and a perfect figure. She was a drummer in the orchestra and danced ballet. Every guy on campus referred to her as "Hot Math Babe," because she was so intimidatingly genius in class. Big nerd. Liked to fight. Had to practically beg the nerdy guys she liked to date her. It was seriously absurd. Finally, during her senior year, she met a freshman fraternity pledge and basically told him they were going out. Now they're married.

you young people are trying to get us to discard our comfortable but outmoded prejudices, but fuck that. We have these prejudices because we like them. We're not going to try to follow the changing fads of reality.

It's not that he's unusually selfish or misogynistic, it's that he's not observant or skilled.

This is right. Nerd misogyny isn't worse, but it does stem from expecting that getting with the girl should be like successfully navigating an adventure. If you've succeeded at both the Initiative and Will checks, shouldn't you be getting Booty?

It's a version of the nice guy phenomenon.

Most of my friends did not get laid in high school, but they did in college, and they didn't really get more socially adept. They just were able to pick their social circle. They grew up, but they didn't really stop being nerds.

It's not that he's unusually selfish or misogynistic, it's that he's not observant or skilled.

I used to say things like that, but it really doesn't work. If you weren't so selfish, you would naturally spend the time it takes to develop the necessary skills.

I'm actually going through this with Caroline right now. She keeps doing things that hurt her brother and saying it was an accident. Sometimes it is an accident, but I point out to her that this really isn't an excuse, because a nice person would be aware of other people and know not to hurt them.

Selfishness through being non-observant is a case of culpable ignorance.

258: Right, but they're no worse than anyone else in high school at this age. It's not like the nerds aren't the only ones fucking up relationships and sex. It's not a nerd problem, just a maturity one.

I used to say things like that, but it really doesn't work. If you weren't so selfish, you would naturally spend the time it takes to develop the necessary skills.

And these are people who, by definition, find it much harder to "develop the necessary skills" to empathize with others who are very unlike us. So, it takes a while before we can actually employ generosity and friendliness in real life rather than just in theory.

related:
I used to go around all the time saying "I'm a good listener, but nobody ever confides in me." I tried to make people feel better by being open-minded and nonjudgmental, but did not know the correct words to say to make people feel reassured. Still don't, actually. It's a skill that takes different amounts of practice for different people.

261: It's a combination of
A) the maturity problem of most high-schoolers
and
B) the reluctance to behave in a mainstream fashion, inability to see the point of conformity or social niceties, et cetera.

I used to go around all the time saying "I'm a good listener, but nobody ever confides in me." I tried to make people feel better by being open-minded and nonjudgmental, but did not know the correct words to say to make people feel reassured. Still don't, actually. It's a skill that takes different amounts of practice for different people.

I've been called a great listener many a time, and I think the real secret is not so much in saying the correct thing to reassure people but in not saying much at all. People will often mistake keeping your mouth shut for paying attention. (Occasionally saying something that reflects that you have in fact been paying attention is even better.)

My best friend and I just had this whole conversation about how people have always just told us things. Like, on a plane, my seatmate is tempted to tell me the most horrible and private secret of his life. Or in coffeeshops or restaurants, if I strike up a conversation, or if someone else does, it's five minutes before I hear about the time he beat up his girlfriend because she had an abortion without telling him and how he's so sorry now. Students come to my office and say, "No one on earth knows this but I'm an alcoholic." Neither my girlfriend nor I can figure out why people react this way to us. These people have no evidence of our being good listeners.

I think it might have a lot to do with being (a) women, who (b) show an emotionally distant curiosity for things. That is, because we have no investment in knowing people's secrets, they can't help themselves.

I've given up trying to meet people to date in public because all flirtations turn into Confessional Hour within minutes.

People will often mistake keeping your mouth shut and looking them in the eye for paying attention.

I'm very uncomfortable with looking people in the eye. I think I realized this at around age 24. It would have made a lot of early relationships go more smoothly if I'd been told this by someone other than the dad I was trying to rebel against.

And these are people who, by definition, find it much harder to "develop the necessary skills" to empathize with others who are very unlike us. So, it takes a while before we can actually employ generosity and friendliness in real life rather than just in theory.

Right. I'm hard pressed to believe that the incentives to stay a pale friendless virgin are all that strong. If someone's behaving in a way that is destructive both to others and themselves--in a way that keeps them lonely--I suspect that they don't know any better, and not for lack of trying.

When I was little, my dad thought I had shifty eyes, so he taught me an interviewing technique he learned where, if you're having trouble making full eye contact with someone for a long time, you focus just on one of their eyes. Gives you a steadier-looking gaze and is easier to keep up when you're nervous.

Good point. So few people realize how easy it actually is to space out completely while still looking someone in the eye. Nod and say, "Mm hmm," a couple of times and you still get credit for being a good listener.

My experience is closer to m. leblanc's than it is to Cryptic Ned's. For example, I know a woman who goes to SF conventions for the sole purpose of getting laid -- she doesn't go to any panels. She goes to parties, and has sex.

being (a) women, who (b) show an emotionally distant curiosity for things

Yr so smart, AWB. I've tried to figure out for a long time why it is that people really do seem to want to tell me all their secrets, immediately, and this seems to hit it right on the nose.

I'm definitely curious, but not particularly invested. It's like, oh, you're secretly gay? Huh. Right on. I also seem to be able to make facial expressions that are just enough: surprised without being appalled, slightly sympathetic without being overly concerned, etc. It really is quite weird.

I suspect that they don't know any better, and not for lack of trying.

At the risk of joining Ned in "whining wistfully," I suspect that it comes down to a distinction between trying, and trying to try. By which I mean that people often continue to behave in destructive ways, despite recognizing that it's left them pale and friendless, for fear that actively attempting to exercise more productive skills could lead to even more disastrous results. A fear of failure kind of thing. I suspect the most engaging people are the ones who are least concerned with self-protection. Bastards.

I know a woman who goes to SF conventions for the sole purpose of getting laid

When I was going to conventions, I knew a few people who went for just those reasons. And lately, (or so I've heard) conventions have become even friendlier to the poly/pro-kink/fetish crowd so I expect that there's even more of that.

275: I always hoped people confided in me because they found me attractive or thought I must have even more exciting and dangerous secrets, but longterm observations prove otherwise. In fact, a great huge number of my internet dating experiences ended with me learning every terrible creepy thing about the gentleman in question and then him either not being capable of physical attraction anymore or just never seeing me again. Spread that out over three hours or six months and you have the past seven years of my dating life.

I hate to test AWB's theory, but I got this all the time when I was younger, and I'm sure I wasn't a woman, nor, alas, did hoards of people find me particularly attractive. I suspect I suffered from being prematurely avuncular.

276: Fear of success is more common than fear of failure, I think. Lonesome or not, nerdiness comes with twin consolations of moral and intellectual superiority (whether real or imaginary) that are pretty hard to beat. Learning how to interact outside that context means leaving those familiar consolations behind. There's a reason why many nerdy kids today are obsessive, even almost gleeful, about self-diagnosing with autism or Asperger's Syndrome and describing themselves as essentially computers in fleshy prisons.

Bingo. I've aggressively pursued a couple nerds who were clearly attracted to me, but seemed horrified at the idea of actually having to emerge from their activity prison and, you know, date, talk about stuff, and have sex.

What I was talking about above was "fear of success" misogyny, which I suppose wouldn't have to be especially misogynist except re: The Flesh. (E.G., some such guy could have many non-dating female friends).

There's a reason why many nerdy kids today are obsessive, even almost gleeful, about self-diagnosing with autism or Asperger's Syndrome and describing themselves as essentially computers in fleshy prisons

To build on what Di said in 265, you can rarely guess what words will reassure someone, and people rarely want reassurance. They want to be able to share what's going on with someone.

If you want people to confide in and trust you (as opposed to being a magnet for random confessions), it comes down to two things IME:

1) Starting with "Damn, I'm sorry that happened," "That's great," or "How are you feeling about it?" as appropriate. Do not say, "It'll be all right."*

2) Asking questions. If the person wants to do all the talking, great, let them go. If not, ask, ask, ask. It's how you show the person you're interested and willing to share the burden with them, in a way. I'm not saying that quite right. It may also help them work through whatever it is. If you're prying, the person will generally let you know tacitly or explicitly.

*The absolute best reaction I got -- from the new boss I'd had for maybe a week -- when I started telling people my mom had cancer was "That sucks." So much better than "Oh, I hope everything will be all right," however well intentioned.

271: But which eye? Do you switch? What about aiming for the midpoint between the two? Will other people notice that you're creepily staring at only one of their eyes? I know I wouldn't, but I never look at people's eyes. I suspect I'm an outlier.

I am sympathetic with the desire to self-diagnose, in that what it's demonstrating is a desire for people to stop moralizing about their social behavior and stop trying to "fix" them. If they're either happy being themselves or too depressed by their past attempts to change, people should be allowed to be left alone. In some ways, it would be really upsetting to find out that I just am the way I am and I'm unlikely to be able to reset myself, but in others, it would be a giant relief and I could construct a language for explaining to people how I do and don't function.

There is a difference between those moments where someone is saying, "I need advice, because I want to get along better with people" and when they say, "This is how I am and you need to recognize that not everyone is like you."

Sir Kraab is so right about this. Reassurance really isn't what's needed, especially from someone you're not super close to. Most people just want acknowledgement that they're dealing with something shitty. "It'll be all right" or similar is just really annoying, because that's really not something you can truthfully say without knowing a lot more information.

Also, it's best not to assume how people are feeling, which is why "how are you feeling about it?" is a good question. I find it weird when I still get people giving a standard "I'm really sorry to hear that" upon hearing of my mother's death when I was a kid. It's like, dude, it happened almost twenty years ago. I'm over it.

289: Pick one eye and stick with it, and it's virtually undetectable. This is not advice for situations in which warm, natural eye contact feels good and possible, as it's always better, but picking one eye is better than looking at the floor or at your interlocutor's nose or hairline.

Oh, God yes! A guy I knew once came to the conclusion that he needed to become a "better listener." (Actually, I believe his wife and their marriage therapist came to this conclusion and so informed him, but I digress.) He told me this, told me he was going to be a better listener from now on, and then his entire strategy boiled down to: "Okay, you talk now." Made me crazy.

291 - I get the same thing. Whenever I have to tell someone that my mom died twenty years ago, and they say "I'm sorry", it's hard to resist making my eyes go real wide and say ing "I knew it! It was you!"

I desperately need to learn how to ask questions. Even my recent teaching evaluation was all about how I lead discussions without ever really asking questions; instead, I make provocative, ridiculous statements and say "Eh?" (Basically, attending one of my classes is a lot like reading my blog.) Most of my conversations with friends are the same. We trade stories or ideas, or respond to one another with almost no questions, only statements in response to other statements. We tend to build ideas together, or bat around an idea, rather than forcing one another to play a specific move.

Part of that comes from my own queasiness about answering questions. I never liked it in school or in social environments, and in dating it often feels confrontational to me, especially if my interlocutor is looking for a specific kind of answer. I have a perverse reaction to questioning wherein I respond with something particularly unexpected and then ask them the same question back. I even dislike questions like, "What kind of music do you like?" and "What movies have you seen recently?" I keep wondering when we can go back to regular conversation, as questions seem to signal, to me, some kind of boredom or stasis in my conversational partner.

But also, I've never gotten thorough or interesting responses from questions. I've tried asking questions on dates ("Do you have any siblings?" "What do you want out of dating?" etc.) in the hopes of spurring more regular conversation, but it's just not a mode I work in well, and people seem to sense this.

I do ask questions like about how people are doing, how certain things are going, how people feel about things. But I really hate prying into people's emotional and personal lives, almost as much as I hate mine being pried into. I'll volunteer almost anything, as long as I'm not asked to. I already feel like I get a huge amount of voluntary personal information from people, and that I give plenty myself.

296: I think most comfortable friend-conversations are like that, AWB. Small talk and questioning are really just the ways we deal with people who we don't know that well. It's just a polite way of probing, trying to shed some light on their interests and personality in hopes of finding common ground where conversation will become more comfortable and free-flowing.

Some people are a hell of a lot better at it than others. It's certainly more natural if you're somewhere where things are going on, as metacommentary will often flow more freely than questions, and give some great insights into how someone thinks.

I almost can't even imagine one-on-one dating with someone I didn't already know well. Those first several minutes (and sometimes the whole conversation) can feel like pulling teeth with the wrong person, and there are just too many wrong people out there to find dinner-long shots in the dark very appealing.

Exactly. Usually combined with the "Even after we've talked about something in your life, I won't ever ask you how it's going, because if you want me to know, you'll tell me."

Also, let me preempt any possible spiral down into a Mars/Venus thread by saying this is not limited to the male of the species. More common, because of the way most men are socialized, but not at all exclusive.

297: Yeah, I think I have gotten used to getting people to talk through less question-centric means from teaching and from various work environments, so I use these even with strangers on dates, and it tends to work pretty well, keeping conversation going. But I'm sure that many of them go home and say, "She never asked me a single question about myself!" and feel the way Kraab and Di do, that I must not be that interested in them.

For what it's worth, in my experience one reason for the "nerdiness = no sex" equation is that nerdiness involves a large amount of sublimation, for lack of a better word.

It's difficult to be a hard-core nerd unless, on some level, you have nothing better to do with your time. Most of my nerd friends in high school were much less nerdy when they were having sex, in part because being in a relationship just filled up a lot of the spare time that had been spent on nerdy pursuits.

299: If you've got a genuine two-sided conversation going, your partner is probably not complaining that you are not asking enough questions. The point of questions are to signal genuine interest, and if the other person is talking, chances are you've sent an effective signal. If you are doing all of the talking, and find yourself saying things like, "You never say anything," then chances are you need to figure out whether you actually are interested* in the person you are talking to.

Where did I meet him? My online simulated baseball league for sabermetric nerds, of course.

Have I mentioned XOHoops here before? A very geeky basketball simulation that is based, as much as possible, on all of the APBRMetrics work. It's a work in progress, but I've corresponded quite a bit with the person developing it and he's doing good work.

I am sympathetic with the desire to self-diagnose, in that what it's demonstrating is a desire for people to stop moralizing about their social behavior and stop trying to "fix" them.

I'm not necessarily that sympathetic, because often I have the suspicion that many of those who like to self-diagnose do, in fact, have the capacity to learn how to socialize in different contexts and are using the self-diagnosis as something of an excuse. Which on one level is their call, obviously, but on another has the unwelcome effect of trivializing actual mental illnesses. I'd rather people just said "I prefer being this way."

(Also, let's be real, there are even some who need someone to moralize at them about their social behaviour, because the awkwardness they come to prize actually does lead them to act like assholes.)

It's difficult to be a hard-core nerd unless, on some level, you have nothing better to do with your time. Most of my nerd friends in high school were much less nerdy when they were having sex, in part because being in a relationship just filled up a lot of the spare time that had been spent on nerdy pursuits.

Part of that comes from my own queasiness about answering questions. I never liked it in school or in social environments...

Clearly, you are Stephen Maturin (or possibly Clarissa Oakes):

From some context he could not recall Stephen had mentioned his dislike of being questioned: "Question and answer is not a civilized form of conversation." "Oh how I agree," she cried. "A convict is no doubt more sensitive on the point but quite apart from that I always used to find that perpetual inquisition quite odious: even casual acquaintances expect you to account for yourself." "It is extremely ill-bred, extremely usual, and extremely difficult to turn aside gracefully or indeed without offence."

i always look at people's eyes straight, in japan they found it pretty intimidating
then i have lazy eyes so people think i do not look at them and tend to follow my wandering eye where i'm looking
very convenient to read one's face

why people keep asking me for directions
me too, everywhere i go people ask me directions
the problem is i don't know either the place or the language
i think it's because i do not avoid eye contact people tend to ask one who looks at them may be
not the people trying to avoid them

I get this, too -- which is sadly ironic, as I am about the most geographically challenged person on earth. (Like, not 100% sure of street names on the way to my own damn house challenged. Something about looking non-threatening, I think.